Cool Girls (film)
| producer = | story = Phil LordTBA | starring = | music = | editing = Robert Fisher Jr. | production companies = | distributor = Sony Pictures Releasing | released = | runtime = 119 minutes | country = United States | language = English | ratings = PG (MPAA) | budget = $90 million | gross = $375.4 million }} Cool Girls is an 2020 American computer-animated comedy film directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman. It was the second film to be produced by The SPA Studios (Sergio Pablos Animation), after Netflix's 2019 film, Klaus. It was released by Columbia Pictures, produced by Sony Pictures Animation & Movie Land Animation Studios and a production of The SPA Studios (Sergio Pablos Animation), and directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman from the screenplay by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman, and will feature an ensemble cast that includes Jamie Chung, Hailee Steinfeld, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Gal Gadot, Tenzing Norgay Trainor, Chloe Bennet, Dove Cameron, Shameik Moore, Mel Brooks and Kevin Hart. Production of the film was first leaked online after the November 2014 hacks of Sony's computers which revealed studio co-chairman Amy Pascal in talks with Movie Land Animation Studios for a feature film. It was eventually confirmed in July 2016 with the film intended on being in motion-capture combined with photo-realistic computer-animation which is being provided by Movie Land Digital Production Services, and the CGI animation is also provided by Movie Land Digital Production Services. Cool Girls premiered in the Regency Village Theater on January 3, 2020 and is scheduled to be released on January 17, 2020 in the United States by Sony Pictures Releasing under the Columbia Pictures label. It has been nominated for Best Animated Feature in the 92nd Academy Awards, but lost to Toy Story 4. The spin-off film Cool Boys will be release in February 12, 2021 with Panko and Panda Studios will be involved to produce the film and provide the film's animation production and with Industrial Light & Magic will be signed on to provide the film's visual effects and CG animation. The sequel film is also in development. Plot Cast * Jamie Chung as Ella * Hailee Steinfeld as Bethany * Bex Taylor-Klaus as Elizabeth * Gal Gadot as Gwen * Tenzing Norgay Trainor as Kim * Chloe Bennet as Nancy * Dove Cameron as Chloe * Shameik Moore as Tom * Mel Brooks as Tracy * Kevin Hart as Gary * Becky G as Rita * Genesis Rodriguez as Addison * Rosa Salazar as Natalie * Seth MacFarlane as David * Tom Hardy as Roger * Bill Fagerbakke as Todd * Jake Johnson as Kyle * Michael Dwayne Cohen as Jack * Christopher Knights as the Gibberish Cat * Seth Rogen as John * Panat Thamrongsombutsakul as R.O.D. the Robot * James Corden as Rodney Production Development Movie Land Animation Studios had already begun the process of starting development of movies with budgets of around $320 million. The intellectual property for these films was meant to be supplied by Movie Land Animation Studios among others and included Penguinopolis, Smash of Claws, The Animals in the Attic and Stickman 2: Larry's Adventure had been approaching the original crew from the television series to make a high-profile, animated theatrical feature-length film adaptation and had long wanted to partner with Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation to release the film given the network's extraordinary legacy in the world of animation, including some of the most enduring characters on cable television history. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman agreed to make a feature film version of the show with the promise it would be the first of a planned trilogy. During development stages of the film, he and his co-director Joaquim Dos Santos, and co-writer Conrad Vernon, intended to revisit some of the greatest films of the time, with, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Klaus having the core inspirations for the film. Pre-production Pre-production officially began in the United Kingdom by early December 2015. That same month, director Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman stated that the film will be another great love story with a new love interest being cast. The next month, production designer Justin K. Thompson was announced to be designing the film's production designer, as well as Neal H. Moritz, also making the movie as co-producer. Writing In August 2016, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman revealed via Twitter that he had begun writing the screenplay for the film along with Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. Animation As with The Star, Sony Pictures Animation will have the animation produced by another studio other than Sony Pictures Imageworks, which handles digital production for most of SPA's films. For this film, Grossology is animated by Movie Land Digital Production Services in San Francisco, California and its sister facilities in Jalisco, Mexico, by combining Movie Land Digital Production Services' computer animation pipeline with CGI animation production techniques inspired by the book created by Sylvia Branzei and will also be animated in a combination of motion capture along with photo-realistic computer animation, just like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Visual effects The CGI environment, CGI animation, and visual effects were also provided by Movie Land Digital Production Services, which is supervised by William Renschen. The film utilizes "virtual-reality tools", per visual effects supervisor William Renschen. Virtual production supervisor Girish Balakrishnan said on his professional website that the filmmakers used motion capture and VR/AR technologies, with the production team combining VR technology with cameras in order to film the remake in a VR-simulated environment. New software had to be developed for the movie, and made it possible to create scenes with a shaky-cam look of a handheld camera, to make the film seem as realistic as it can be similar to a television series. Sanford Panitch, Columbia Pictures's President of Production, called the film's visual effects "a new form of filmmaking", and felt that "Historical definitions don't work", stating that "it uses some techniques that would traditionally be called animation, and other techniques that would traditionally be called live-action. It is an evolution of the technology used in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water". Rather than animators do everything, the team also used artificial intelligence to allow virtual characters behave in ways that mimicked real human beings. Design The crew used the same processes from the original television series in the making of the film, most notably the 'skroutlines', which was a seamless blend of a more traditional screenplay with a more simple outline which resembled strong short stories and gave the storyboard artists such as Maurice Fontenot, Abigail Nesbitt and Guy Moore all the creative and aesthetic freedom neccessary. Warburton and Willems themselves provided the film's animatics. It took around a year for two animators to create 10 seconds of footage that reflected the producers's vision; the animation work developed from there. During initial development, the directors worked with a single animator to establish the film's look. This number eventually grew to 60 animators during production. It became clear that this would not be enough to complete the film on time, so the crew was expanded further. The number had reached 142 animators by February 2019 and at one point to 177 animators, the largest animation crew that Movie Land Digital Production Services had ever used for a film. Animation work was completed in April 28, 2019. The CGI and hand-drawn animation for the film was combined with "line work and painting and dots and all sorts of comic book techniques" to make it look like it was created by hand, which was described as "a living painting". This was achieved by artists taking rendered frames from the CGI animators and working on top of them in 2D, with the goal of making every frame of the film "look like a comic panel". Lord described this style of animation as "totally revolutionary", and explained that the design combines the in-house style of Sony Pictures Animation with the "flavor" of digital artists such as Christopher Arambulo Cosgrove and Chris Lawrence. The directors all felt that the film would be one of the few that audiences actually "need" to watch in 3D due to the immersive nature of the animated world created, and the way that the hand-drawn animation elements created specifically for the film create a unique experience; Persichetti described this experience as a combination of the effects of an old-fashioned hand-drawn multiplane camera and a modern virtual reality environment. Technology PIX System provided the production crew with secure access to production content and project management throughout the suite of devices used. Music In August 2018, Henry Jackman, James Newton Howard, Lorne Balfe and Daniel Pemberton, who was collaborated with Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Amy Pascal, Avi Arad, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, was announced to compose the film's score. The soundtrack will be available for purchase on digital on January 11, 2020 and on Compact Disc on January 14 by Spinnin' Records. The film score will be available for purchase on digital and CD on the same date as digital by Sony Classical Records. Marketing Sony released a Comic-Con poster on March 31, 2019. The teaser poster and teaser trailer was released on July 3, 2019 was attached to screenings for Spider-Man: Far From Home. Sony released teaser poster for the film on July 3, 2019 along with a teaser trailer on the same day. The first trailer was released on September 28, 2019 and was attached to screenings for Abominable amd released the first poster. On December 24, 2019, Sony released the theatrical release poster for the film. The next day, the final trailer was released on December 25, 2019 and was attached to screenings for Spies in Disguise. This trailer received universal acclaim praising the animation which most critics called "beautiful and unreal" and the selection of music which fit moments of the trailer was praised as well. The TV spot was released on January 2, 2020 on Cartoon Network, NBC and Fox. On January 14, 2020, Activision released the video game on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One to be released on January 14, 2020. At the same day as a video game, Outfit7 released the mobile app called Cool Girls: Teenage on the Run in the United States on App Store and Google Play Store. Release Cool Girls was premiered at the Regency Village Theater on January 3, 2020 and is currently scheduled to be released in the United States on January 17, 2020 by Columbia Pictures in RealD 3D, Digital 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX, and IMAX 3D. Reception Box office Cool Girls grossed $190.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $185.3 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $375.5 million, against a production budget of $90 million. In the United States and Canada, Cool Girls was released on the same weekend as Dolittle and Bad Boys for Life, and was projected to gross $30–35 million from 3,813 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $12.6 million on its first day, including $3.5 million from Thursday night previews, and went on to debut to $35.4 million, finishing first at the box office and marking the best-ever December opening for an animated film. The film made $16.7 million in its second weekend, finishing fourth behind newcomers Spider-Man: Far From Home, Abominable, The Addams Family and Playing with Fire, and then $18.3 million in its third weekend, finishing fourth again. In its fifth weekend the film made $13 million, finishing in fourth for a third straight week. The weekend following its Best Animated Picture win, the film was added to 1,661 theaters (for a total of 2,104) and made $2.1 million, marking a 138% increase from the week before. Critical response On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 97%, based on 369 reviews, with an average rating of 8.77/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse matches bold storytelling with striking animation for a purely enjoyable adventure with heart, humor, and plenty of superhero action." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare average grade of "A+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 90% overall positive score and an 80% "definite recommend", as well as a rare 5 star rating. David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "B+" and called it "hilarious and ultimately even poignant", writing: "An eye-popping and irreverent animated experience from the marvelous comic minds who brought you 21 Jump Street... Into the Spider-Verse is somehow both the nerdiest and most inviting superhero film in a long time; every single frame oozes with fan service..." Oliver Jones of The New York Observer gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars and wrote, "The greatest triumph and biggest surprise of the film is that it is an LSD freak-out on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey." Johnny Oleksinski of The New York Post gave the film a 3.5 rating out of 4, hailing the film as "the best stand-alone film to feature the iconic character so far", and praising Miles's characterization as "more fleshed out than the usual Marvel heroes". Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com praised the film's atmosphere and visual effects, saying the film "has a wonderfully trippy, dreamlike quality about it." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "...the freshest and most stimulating aspect of the film is the visual style, which unites the expected Marvel mix of 'universes' (it used to be assumed there was only one universe in creation) with animation that looks both computer-driven and hand-drawn, boasts futuristic as well as funky urban elements, moves the 'camera' a lot and brings together a melting pot of mostly amusing new characters." William Bibbiani of The Wrap felt the film "represents some of the best superhero storytelling on the market", and that it "captures the sprawling interconnectivity of comic-book universes in a way that no other feature film has", calling it the best Spider-Man film since Spider-Man 2. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times said that "What distinguishes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in the end is that it takes its mission seriously, even when it's being transparently silly". David Sims of The Atlantic said that the film "somehow, through sheer creative gumption, does something new in the superhero genre", particularly praising the use of comic book's "visual language", as well as the characters' dynamic, and felt that the "anarchic fingerprints" of producers Lord and Miller were "all over the movie". Katie Walsh of Tribune News Service said that the film is "unlike any other superhero or animated film that has come before", comparing the animation to "watching a comic book come to life", and feeling that the film "firmly exists in a post-''Deadpool'' environment, where it seems the only fresh way into a century-old superhero is to skewer the tropes, make fun of the merchandising and acknowledge the cultural significance of it all in a cheeky and self-reflective manner", and that Lord, who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay, was "The key to the balance of self-aware and sweet" present in the film. Industry response Tom Holland, who plays Parker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, praised the film as "one of the coolest films has ever seen," while Holland's MCU co-star Chris Pratt, who also worked with Lord and Miller in ''The Lego Movie'' films, called it an "emotionally moving, cutting edge, progressive, diverse, funny, meta, action-packed, silly, visually stunning masterpiece!" Patton Oswalt, who also worked with Lord and Miller on 22 Jump Street, called the film "brilliant" and continued "This has been a non-stop year for me and I'm glad I'm ending it in such a cinematic high-note. Not only is it the best superhero film ever made, it's flat-out a game-changing MOVIE. Seeing it again tomorrow!" Kevin Smith reviewed the film on his podcast Fatman Beyond, stating, "I always liked Spider-Man but this movie made me love Spider-Man on a Batman-type level", and continued saying, "It just goes to show you that any character in the right hands can be a transformative experience." Barry Jenkins, writer and director of the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight which also starred Ali, praised the film calling it "magnificent"; citing it as the best Spider-Man film, one of the best films of 2018, and the best tentpole film since Edge of Tomorrow. Jenkins continued, saying, "I was stupefied. I mean just tremendous, tremendous work, so grounded and full of verve; visceral. Saw it on the biggest screen I could find, just a viscerally enthralling experience. I salute you." Rian Johnson, writer and director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, described the film as "the Velvet Underground of superhero movies" as he believes it will be an influential film. Accolades Future Spin-offs In 2018, it was announced that Movie Land Animation Studios will producing the spin-off film based on the film Cool Girls for and untitled Cool Girls spin-off film featuring the teenage boys. In October 2019, the MLAS staff announced that it will be in-production with Tenzing Norgay Trainor, Michael Cohen, Jake Johnson, Jake T. Austin, Justin Bieber and Ryan Potter will play the voice roles. At the same momth, it was announced that Panko and Panda Studios will be involved to produce the film and was announced that it will be entitled Cool Boys by Sony Pictures Animation and Movie Land Animation Studios. In November 2019, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman, who had previously been directed on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, will signed on to direct the film. References External links Coming soon! 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